Word: standoff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...improve ties with Taiwan's chief rival, China. The two separated in 1949 after Mao Zedong's Communists were victorious in a civil war with the KMT, which fled to the island of Taiwan and set up its own government. Beijing and Taipei have engaged in a military standoff ever since and the heavily armed strait that separates them remains one of Asia's hottest potential flashpoints. China still sees Taiwan as a runaway province and claims sovereignty over the island to this...
...Serbia, itself, Russia capitalized literally, on the standoff over Kosovo. In Belgrade, just a week before he became Russia's President-elect, Dmitri Medvedev supervised Serbia's signing up to a prospective Russian Southern Stream natural gas pipe-line. Serbia also sold to Russia a 51% stake of Naftna Industrija Srbija (NIS), a much prized national oil company for $614 million and the promise of a further investment of $770 million. Russia plans build a major gas storage facility in Serbia, making the country a key base for Russian energy supplies to Europe. This consolidation of ties with Serbia achieves...
...official who until now has been Washington's point man in handling the Iranian nuclear issue - U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, who left office last week - has made clear that the standoff will land on the desk of the next U.S. President rather than being resolved under the Bush Administration. "I think this is going to be a drama that plays out well into 2009 and beyond," Burns told the Council on Foreign Relations last week. He added, "There's plenty of room for this type of diplomacy, both sanctions as well as the positive offers of negotiations. That...
...matters to our future because it underscores three alarming features of the current international system. First, it exposes the chill in relations between the U.S. and Russia, which is making it difficult for the U.N. Security Council to meet 21st century collective-security challenges. Putin has used the Kosovo standoff as yet another excuse to flaunt his petro-powered invincibility, sending his likely successor, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, to Belgrade to sign a gas agreement. If a firm international response is to be mobilized toward Iran, Sudan or other trouble spots in the coming years, the U.S. will have...
...looked like the annual awards of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts were going to be the only celebration of film that mattered this season. The U.S. writers' strike had already reduced the Golden Globes to a glorified checklist, and as long as negotiations were a standoff, the Oscars were no sure thing, either. Yes, the Screen Actors Guild awards had gone ahead as planned, but that doesn't resonate much beyond U.S. borders: a SAG award gets you back pats from showbiz pals, but it won't sell your film in France. So it looked like last...